1954 in Television - Events

Events

• January 1 – NBC broadcasts the Rose Parade in NTSC color on 21 stations.
• January 3 – RAI launched in Italy.
• January 10 – CBMT opens in Montreal, making that city the first in Canada to have 2 stations operating. The new station operates in English, leaving CBFT to continue entirely in French. Thus begins Canada's "two nations" approach to TV.
• January 11 – The first weather forecast with an in-vision presenter is televised in the UK.
• March 28 – WKAQ-TV became the first television station in Puerto Rico.
• April – The American Broadcasting Company broadcasts the Army-McCarthy hearings live and in their entirety.
• June 5 – The last new episode of the comic variety program, Your Show of Shows, airs.
• June 13 – First television broadcast begins in Colombia.
• July 5 – First actual news bulletin, News and Newsreel, aired on BBC Television, replacing Television Newsreel.
• September 11 – The Miss America Beauty Contest airs for the first time on national television in the United States. 27 million viewers watched as Lee Ann Meriwether won the crown. Meriwether would later become a television actress, co-starring in Barnaby Jones (1973–1980).
• October 2 - The Jimmy Durante Show premieres on NBC (1954–1956).
• November 3 – Disney's Alice in Wonderland airs on ABC.
• November 19 –TMC Monte Carlo launched in Monaco is the first Microstate Television
• December 12 – BBC Television screens its famous, and controversial, adaptation of George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four.
• Television Act 1954 authorises setting up the infrastructure for British commercial television.
• The British Academy Television Awards, the most prestigious awards in the British television industry, are first awarded.
• The RCA CT-100 and Westinghouse 15" color sets hit the market. Neither are big sellers.